Dear Boris,
Following the tragic death of yet another cyclist at Vauxhall under the wheels of a HGV truck, Stop Killing Cyclists call on the London Mayor to urgently increase enforcement of Truck Safety Laws and set a target of pushing the level of illegally driven or in an illegally dangerous state trucks down below 1% by the end of 2015, from the current estimated 30% level.
The Mayor must :
* Increase the funding to the Metropolitan Police Truck Enforcement Unit to achieve this target
* Amend all TfL Bus and HGV contracts (including Crossrail) to ban the practice of penalising drivers using time or load-based key performance indicators (KPI)
* Ban the use of iBus to text TfL Bus Drivers while they're driving and introduce safety performance KPIs which reward drivers for driving safely

Why is this important?

In London over half cyclist fatalities involve HGVs, despite HGVs making up only 5% of traffic [1].
The Metropolitan Police found in one targetted action that as few as a third of lorries met safety regulations [2]. The police must step up enforcement efforts to catch dangerous lorries before they kill more Londoners.
TfL and other bus and truck companies must stop using incentives which encourage dangerous driving, a practice which has been linked to the disproportionate number of accidents involving HGVs, especially those from the construction industry [3].
A TRL study showed texting whilst driving could be more dangerous than drink or drug driving [4]. Therefore it is unacceptable that TfL is using a text based system to communicate with bus drivers while they are driving.
With one cycling death a month so far in 2014 and even more pedestrian deaths, urgent action must be taken to prevent further fatalities on our roads.